Feature Book:

Excitotoxins...The Taste That Kills

by Russell L. Blaylock, M. D.

Today's foods are geared for the masses: volume is the
key concept here. In order to have volume, you must build into the food the
ability to conceal a lack of freshness, create a perception of flavor where the
ingredients may not dictate it, and to preserve it as long as possible. In an
effort to support these goals, all kinds of food additives are included in your
food everywhere that you look.

One group of food additives fall into a category called
Excitotoxins. These additives stimulate the neurons in your brain; to the point
of being literally stimulated to death. This book, covering a critical issue
that is unknown to most Americans, discusses the many aspects of Excitotoxins.

Reader's Note: The first half of this review covers how
the brain works. The second, how Excitotoxins do their dirty work. If you are
short on time, skip the first half. However, it is difficult to truly appreciate
the danger of eating Excitotoxins without understanding how the brain functions.
The portion on the brain has been greatly abbreviated; for the interested reader,
we highly recommend that you read the book.

How The Brain Works From A Hormonal Perspective

"The human brain is one of the most complex entities in
the known universe. Within this three pound mass of jelly-like tissue there
exist over ten billion nerve cells, billions more nerve pathways, and a million
trillion connections. Often the brain is compared to a computer. But the
organization of this remarkable organ is infinitely more complex than any
computer system known. At best, it can be compared to a living computer."

"Thanks to the many new techniques in neurochemistry and
neuroanatomy, we now know a lot more about how brain cells and their connections
are arranged. For example, we know that in the cortex, neurons are arranged in
functional columns, each interacting with its neighbor..."

"The pituitary gland has been called the master gland,
because it is the central control center for most of the endocrine glands
located throughout the body...the pituitary gland controls the other
endocrine glands, such as the adrenal glands, the thyroid, and the reproductive
organs, by releasing small amounts of its controlling hormones into the
blood...by using this control, the brain can regulate growth, [and] metabolism..."

But what controls the pituitary gland?

...the pituitary is connected a wedge shaped piece of
brain called the hypothalamus. This tiny piece of brain, despite its size, is
immensely important. It controls hormone releasing factors that travel only
a few centimeters to the pituitary gland, where they stimulate the pituitary to
release its hormones...the hypothalamus regulates hormone balance in the body...it
also controls hunger and sateity, sleep and walking cycles, the autonomic
system, sleep cycles, and even our biological clocks.

The Nervous System And The Brain

"The nervous system...is a system that can generate
impulses and convey those impulses over long distances by way of special
self-propagating biochemical events. And it is an
endocrine gland."

"The typical nerve cell is made of three parts: a dendrite,
which receives the information, a cell body, which acts as the central command
headquarters, and the axon, a single fiber which carries the signal to the next
dendrite."

"The brain consumes 20% of
the body's oxygen, and 25% of the body's glucose, yet makes up only 2% of the
body's weight. The majority of this energy is spent supporting impulse
generation and transmission. The brain never rests, even during deep sleep. In
fact, during anesthesia the brain is still consuming enormous amounts of energy."

(It is over the axon that impulses - information that we
transmit through our brain and body - are sent.) "Some axons conduct these
impulses at 200 miles per hour. While there is an electric current generated,
the impulse is actually a chemical message. In order for this chemical message
to reach the next neuron down the line, a gap must be bridged. This gap is
called the synapse."

"While occasionally the gap is crossed by true electrical
conductance, in most cases it occurs by a chemical transfer of information. This
is referred to as neurotransmission and the chemical messenger is called a
neurotransmitter. Trillions of chemical messages are being transmitted
throughout the brain every second."

Amino Acids

"One of the basic reactions occurring in biochemistry
involves the breaking down of compounds in our food so as to release
energy...some (of the basic reactions) form a part of the membrane structure of
the cell itself, while others may be used to form enzymes, hormones, and
components of various tissues...proteins are used by the body for a variety
of functions...amino acids are nothing more than chemical building blocks used
to create proteins."

"In the early 1950's a neuroscientist by the name of Dr.
T. Hayaski, found that when monosodium glutamate (MSG) was injected into the
grey matter of the dog's brain, the dog would fall down in its cage and begin to
convulse wildly. Based on this observation, he concluded that glutamate was
causing the dog's brain cells to become overexcited and fire uncontrollably.
Despite this important observation, the report was
largely ignored."

"...glutamate...causes
neurons to fire spontaneously and repeatedly. Another amino acid, aspartate,
causes a similar effect. Thus far, over seventy such excitatory amino acids have
been discovered."

"By 1973 a group of scientists demonstrated that glutamate,
indeed, met all of the characteristics necessary to be considered a
neuro-transmitter -"

"Being excitatory transmitters, glutamate and aspartate
both are involved in activating a number of brain systems concerned with sensory
perception, memory, orientation in time and space, cognition, and motor skills.
It is important to appreciate that the brain is
an organ that depends on a delicate balance of excitatory and inhibitory
systems, that is, positive and negative impulses. Disruptions of this balance
can lead to anything from a minor tremor of the hands to an uncontrollable
writhing motion of the body, or even the violent explosion of a full blown
seizure."

(the author notes that glutamate exists within the body
naturally. However, there is a difference between allowing the body to choose
its own balance and drastically overexciting the brain with consuming additional
quantities, sometimes large quantities as MSG and aspartame are hidden in a
large number of foods that we eat.)

"As Dr. George Schwartz has pointed out in his remarkable
book In Bad Taste: The MSG Syndrome, often
MSG and related toxins are added to foods in disguised forms. For example, among
the food manufacturers favorite disguises are hydrolyzed vegetable protein,
vegetable protein, natural flavorings and spices. Each of these may contain
from 12% to 40% MSG."

(In 1968 Dr. Olney, working out of the Department of
Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis repeated experiments originally
performed by Dr. Lucas and Newhouse.) "But what Dr. Olney found was even more
shocking. He discovered that not only did MSG cause
severe damage to the neurons in the retina of the eye, but that it also caused
widespread destruction of neurons in the hypothalamus and other areas of the
brain..."

Excitotoxins And Children

"After birth and following weaning from bottled or breast
milk, most mothers begin feeding their babies food from the table. These
foods frequently contain large amounts of MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein.
Dr. Olney found that these children were receiving doses of MSG from the table
food that equaled the dose used experimentally to produce severe brain cell
destruction in animal experiments. By that I mean proportionally equal.
Often, critics of this observation claim that humans rarely receive such high
doses. This is just not true. Incredibly, humans develop higher blood levels of
glutamate following ingestion of MSG than does any other animal species known.
Dr. Olney noted that: The amount of MSG in a
single bowl of commercially available soup is probably enough to cause blood
glutamate levels to rise higher in a human child than levels that predictable
cause brain damage in immature animals."

(Note that a child being carried in the womb can be
affected by MSG in the diet of the mother.)

Excitotoxins and Alzheimer's

"There are more than twenty-five million persons over the
age of sixty-five living in the United States. Of these, eleven percent
or approximately two million seven hundred thousand, suffer from mild to
moderate dementia, and almost five percent are severely demented. But not all of
these severely demented individuals have Alzheimer's disease. About fifty-five
percent will have Alzheimer's disease, and the rest will have dementia caused by
multiple small strokes...or a combination of Alzheimer's disease and strokes."

"The following is a testimony of a wife of a victim of
Alzheimer's disease before a Joint Congressional Hearing on Alzheimer's:

I can tell you that it is like a funeral that never ends.
My husband was a handsome, vital, athletic man, a civic leader, a public
speaker, a highly respected businessman. He was administrative vice-president of
his company. He is now a statistic. He is permanently hospitalized, not knowing
his family or speaking a word in the last 4 years. He requires total care as the
physical deterioration takes its toll. I have a husband, but I speak of him in
the past tense. I am not a divorcee, I am not a widow; but where do I fit?

On The Aging Of The Brain:

Many years ago, neuropathologists discovered strange
looking clumps of dark staining material scatters the frontal and temporal lobes
over the age of fifty. It soon became obvious that the presence of this unusual
pigment was a normal consequence of aging, hence the name senile plaque. As we
grow older, more and more of these senile plaques develop. Today they are called
neuritic plaques. </ p>

"It appears that these plaques represent failed
attempts by neurons to sprout new dendritic processes (the receiving or
input fibers of neurons)."

"Recently, it was discovered that low brain levels of
the vitamin B-12 can cause severe intellectual deterioration.

"...for instance, recurrent bouts of severe hypoglycemia
can cause accumulated brain damage much like the mini-stokes..."

"Exposing cultures of normal hippocampal neurons to high
concentrations of glutamate significantly increase the staining of these neurons
to all three...Alzheimer-specific immune stains. Even more interesting was the
finding that concentrations of glutamate below that which can kill neurons (subtoxic
doses) also markedly increased the immunoreactive staining. This is an
important observation since it strongly suggests that even lower concentration
of food borne excitotoxic taste enhancers and aspartame can result in the same
specific immunoreactive stain changes seen in Alzheimer's disease."

"The distribution of cellular damage caused by large
concentrations of MSG is very similar to that seen in human cases of Alzheimer's
disease."

"In one study in which the brains of Alzheimer's patients
were examined it was found that the areas most often affected by the disease
demonstrated very high levels of these destructive enzymes and free radicals."

Unlike most animal experiments using glutamate or
aspartate (which involves short exposures) with human cases of Alzheimer's
disease the exposure to these excitotoxins would be expected to persist over
decades - over a lifetime. This is especially true with the large number of
foods now containing excitotoxin taste enhancers of various sorts and with the
widespread use of aspartame. It is important to recall that excitotoxin damage
is multiplied by the addition of several excitotoxins in one's diet. Glutamate
plus aspartame is much more toxic than either one used alone. Many foods contain
glutamate, aspartate and cysteine as hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Most diet
colas contain aspartame, with the primary ingredient of aspartate."

(Note that aspartame is a main ingredient in the infamous
most common sweetener used in diet colas, low cal fruit juices, cakes, cookies,
and nearly anything else that you find labeled low calorie.)

"While there is as yet no proof, it makes sense that
general stimulation of the nervous system should be avoided by individuals at
greatest risk of developing one of the neurodegenerative diseases, such as
Alzheimer’s disease...Caffeine is a mild brain stimulant... by stressing the
neurons, you could tip the scales causing the neurons to die sooner."

"It is interesting to note the first experiments done to
test the safety of aspartame before its final approval in 1981 disclosed a high
incidence of brain tumors in the animals fed NutraSweet."

A comment from Vita-Connection: This book is packed
with information. Keep in mind that it is impossible for us to properly present
the information to you and keep this page short enough to be readable. We
strongly recommend that you read this book in its entirety. It is well written,
and packed with information. Refer to the
Discussions/Memory/Alzheimers
and Discussions/Hypoglycemia
sections of this web page for more information from this great source.